Qun Inc
by Taffia
Summary: Antaam Industries faced certain dissolution amidst the economic downturn of war. With a cease-fire in place, the General hopes to rebuild a crumbling corporate empire from the ashes of the past, pulling in an unlikely ally from across enemy lines. But Imperium Innovations has not taken its sights off its own inevitable expansion, and old grudges run deep.
1. 1 Unto the Breach

_Chapter One: Unto the Breach_

It was no surprise that the General was brought in to oversee the restructuring of Antaam Industries. A military man by nature and occupation, he was deemed the most appropriate to handle the affairs of the nation's leading provider of armor and weapons research. He knew his way around the field of battle well enough, and it took less than a day to prove he could maneuver a board room just as well.

A grey suit with a crimson tie pinstriped in white, he continued to wear a sort of uniform even when not in military dress. Spiced tea was brewed every morning by his assistant, a slight, red-headed intern who frequently felt obligated to match his color scheme, trading slacks for skirts. She had a cup steaming upon his desk always in time for him to walk through the door. Rigid—that's how most described him. Rigid and methodical and unswerving. The company managers both relaxed and writhed at his presence among them. They feared an iron fist as much as they breathed relief at a return to production and order.

The true shock came with the arrival of the corporate trainer some weeks later. Vanessa Milano was known throughout the city for helping tiny companies grow into fighting giants of the stock exchange. In some ways, she was just as intimidating as the General. In others...for one, her stop through IT had the men paying more attention to her legs than anything she had to say. Tall with dark hair and darker eyes, she had that dusky look about her better suited to runways and magazine foldouts than a desk and a cubicle. But if she actually used her looks to her advantage, it didn't show. Her meetings with every unit and department were brief and to-the-point. Her voice carried an edge that even her lilting accent failed to soften, and "small talk" was not a term in her vocabulary.

The General's assistant brought her tea as well one morning, the two of them meeting in one of the smaller conference rooms to discuss the processes requiring immediate implementation. The scent of cinnamon carried on the steam was the first thing to illicit a smile since Vanessa first set foot in Antaam.

"I recommend a sit-down with human resources," she said over the rim of her cup, delaying that first sip as long as possible in order to savor it all the more. "Accounting feels a little top-heavy, and your firearms research could use the extra manpower. Wasn't it accounting that triggered the downfall in the first place?"

The General did not look up from the paper in his hand, his brows coming together over his broad, straight nose. It was a moment before he responded. His pale eyes continued to scan the words before him like they held something a little more critical than deducing where the canker really was.

"It was, but good employees follow orders from their superiors. Middle management has me uneasy."

Vanessa scoffed. "'Orders'? Sir, this is a research facility not an army base. People will still act on their own volition in any case. The paper trail leads straight to accounting."

"The manager of which reports directly to my predecessor." The eyes came up, fixing themselves on Vanessa with an intensity that made her gulp what tea was in her mouth. "And she is not alone. Funds also vanished from research and development as well as the marketing budget. General Counsel denies all knowledge. The President is gone, but it leaves those loyal to him." He finally set the paper aside. "That is the rot we must carve out, Miss Milano. Antaam Industries can't be what it was until then."

The woman delicately cleared her throat and set her teacup down before she dropped it. "Are you always this dramatic, sir, or are you merely being forceful to make a point?"

"I do not consider myself 'forceful', Miss Milano, but I do always try to make a point. I don't know what your agency told you before they sent you here, but it is not me that you need to be coaching and grooming to lead this company to greatness. I am a voice. Nothing more. What we need from you is to clean the mud from the works, as it were. Your focus on accounting is justifiable, but I need you to keep both eyes open. Always anticipate the unexpected stroke."

"Of course, sir."

Vanessa finished her tea in silence, the two of them both pretending to be more interested in the paperwork that sat between them, logs and records of company activity from the past five years. Files and folders and boxes upon boxes sat all around them, crowding the already small room. But she couldn't actually complain. The closeness made the sterile chill that radiated from across the table all the more easy to bear. Throwing her mind into the auditing process helped with the rest. She was most comfortable in a structured routine, a product of her family's own military background, but she had to admit that it was of a much different sort than whatever she was being exposed to, now.

The General was of this city. She, originally, was not. She was an import like so many other military brats of her generation, settling with some permanency in the last place her father had been stationed before she attended university. There was also always the underlying current of realization that this city was one of the largest in a country that had long been an enemy. The cease-fire was recent and fragile, but it had lasted long enough for life to return to some semblance of normal. The cosmopolitan atmosphere made the younger generation forget that the pale natives and dark newcomers had been the most relentless of enemies for almost as long as they had known each other. In a world where battles were fought without either force needing to meet on a common field of battle, war became as intangible an experience as an Internet romance for those not in the way of unmanned drones or missile fire.

She hadn't ever expected to call Seheron home, but it was as good a place as any other.

For hours, they worked in silence. The General would grunt every now and again if he caught sight of something unsavory. At least, Vanessa assumed it was such as he would set it aside into a pile she had begun with the corrupt corporate accounts. He would scribble and slap sticky notes on a few things, highlight a sentence or entire passage now and again, circle items in photos and floorplans with relative frequency. The woman couldn't quite catch the pattern.

"Are you planning a restructure or a renovation?" she hazarded, not moving from her position of being hunched over a file bursting with handwritten yellow legal pads. The assistant had returned to refresh their tea and tell them that the catered lunch had arrived. Her presence alone, no matter how mousey, supplied a bolstering to the morale.

"I consider it more a redesign. No one can work in a building that crumbles just as no building can be considered suitable enough for those who rebel against its confines. If we are to fix one problem, Miss Milano, we must certainly fix the other."

Vanessa hid her confusion behind another gulp of tea and quickly fell back into her audit. She had much preferred sitting with the other employees, the whole lot of them more personable—corrupt or otherwise. She couldn't even pretend to understand this man, but she had no choice. The agency had given her an assignment, and she was determined to carry it out despite the fact that no one could even tell her the name of her brusque and enigmatic employer.

She would learn soon enough that not knowing the General's name was the very least of her issues. Document after document surfaced that contained information that nearly chilled her. Implications only, but she recognized several _other_ names that made her breath catch. Tiberius Sempo. Danarius Coriati. Talerio Alamarri. Still others littered the contact list of the President, correspondence dating back before the cease-fire. Friendly correspondence and not of the sort discussing golf and the weather. Vanessa slid the sheaf of documents into one of her own file folders and set it aside. Returning to it later would be a necessity, especially if she could find more evidence.

For now, she had seen enough. The CEO of Imperium Innovations named in the same document discussing a corporate merger was enough. And not only him. The subsidiaries and satellite corporations. They all had been circling about Antaam Industries like vultures waiting for a wounded gazelle to die. And the President had been doing his best to kill it.

It was just as the agency had told her.

And her job was to make sure the General never learned of it.


	2. 2 Of Mist and Shadow

_Chapter Two: Of Mist and Shadow_

Kashar crouched in the shadows between two vehicles. There was a stink, a sharp, sour odor coming from beneath the black sedan to his left. Even in the dimness, he could see the stains of vomit on the pavement. His knees hurt and his stomach churned...but he needed to stick it out. Maraas was counting on them to get the prototype before it could be moved back to the tight security of Antaam Industries. And when a Fog Warrior agrees to a contract, he must never back down.

He was not so young as to have blind ideals like so many others in the movement, but he was not so old as to miss the appeal. When his father had lost his union job at Antaam's manufacturing plant, it had crippled his family and sown seeds of discord that took years to flourish. When Imperium had swept in and rehired the workers at a fraction of the living wage with no benefits, Kahsar's heart burned with a seething loathing.

His final years in high school had been punctuated by extensive research into the Tal-Vashoth, a local anarchist party that was viewed as a terrorist group by the government. Both governments. It didn't matter which side of the border you were on. It was only his father's intervention that sobered him, tempering his teenage mind into something more rational. But he never forgot. He went to university to study law, focusing on corporate law to better understand his ultimate enemy. But, by the time he passed the bar, the post-war recession made employment impossible. Not long after that, his father succumbed to ill health.

Kashar now truly found himself with nothing. And there is little that nothing desires more than itself. It takes hold. It multiplies exponentially. It knows where to find anyone who suffers. That was how Maraas found him. A Qunari expatriate, he had chanced upon Kashar at a tavern, sensed his struggle, and promised to ease it.

"There are shadows without darkness, identity amidst the grey. The mist is your brother if you will accept it."

And the truth came. Kashar could yet regain his family's honor without sacrificing his own. But it was up to standards unfamiliar to the traditions of his father's native Par Vollen. The Fog Warriors were not freedom fighters in rebellion of factions to which they may have once belonged. They were what remained of the long-dispersed indigenous population, and they gladly welcomed the wayward nonetheless. Maraas had been embraced into their numbers when the Qunari no longer suited him and the Tal-Vashoth were too unruly.

He waited, now, to fulfill a purpose even the great Qunari could not conceive of, a plot thicker than the cursed blood of a Tevene magister.

_Clack, clack, clack..._

Kashar tensed at the distinctive sound of Antivan leather shoes meeting concrete in steadily paced steps. Cautiously straining to see through the window of the car door beside him without being spotted, he took in the form of a lone businessman in a long, black rain coat. Pale hair that was nearly white was slicked back from his broad forehead, the face beneath it serious and impassive as if it had been frozen that way at birth. He carried a briefcase, a large metal thing that could probably withstand an explosion of magic-imbued _sela petrae_.

One man. Kashar didn't trust it.

"We've spotted the entourage," came a voice through his wireless earpiece. It was Masha, a pureblood Fog Warrior of no small consequence. Her father ensured that Maraas had all the funding he needed for these operations. His daughter's presence was not part of the deal, but that didn't stop her from tagging along. The others didn't stop her, either. She might have only been twelve years old, but a few of them had witnessed her disarm and murder a Crow with his own dagger only a year before. She always worked best as the unexpected stroke. "Waiting for your signal."

Kashar reached down and pushed a button strapped to his wrist. It looked like a watch but was little more than a radio signal. Outside, through walls of concrete and steel, a half-dozen others like it were gently vibrating, signaling to the others to form up and make a move. He had his own business to attend to.

The man with the case was approaching quickly. Kashar dug into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys and dropped it to the ground. "_Vashedan_!" he cursed loudly through clenched teeth, getting down on all fours as he reached under the black sedan.

The footsteps ceased at the trunk. He looked up to see the newcomer watching him with an expression no different than before, but he seemed in no particular hurry to move on.

"Is there a problem, my brother?" he asked politely, his eyes softening even if nothing else did.

For once, Kashar was thankful for his bloodline. He was Qunari on both sides with features marked down on his birth record as "ideal", whatever that meant these days. He still even tried to dress the part when he had business this high up in the city. The charcoal grey of his suit helped with the shadows but also let him walk the exchange and through every corporate lobby without being remotely suspected of having other ties. It was working just as it should.

"My keys," he said at last, reaching one more time beneath the car, hoping not to accidentally touch the vomit that still threatened to overturn his own stomach.

"Perhaps I can help," came the reply. The man didn't wait for Kashar to acquiesce. He merely got to his knees, setting his briefcase to the side without letting go of the handle, and stretched to reach the missing keys as if it were no trouble at all. He smoothly rose, holding the clinking metal with the ring looped over one of his long fingers.

Kashar made a show of getting sheepishly to his feet. He took the keys with a dip of his head. "Thank you, uh..."

"Taarbas," the other finished with a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Don't mention it. All part of a day's work, really."

"Thank you, Taarbas." Kashar looked to his wrist as if to check the time, tapping the glass surface like it were broken. "Today is just...not my day," he went on conversationally, hoping Masha and the others were alert enough to get the message. _False alarm,_ had been the combination he'd put through. _Get back._

Taarbas took him in from head to toe, laying particular focus on the grease and mud that now stained the front of his suit jacket. "Clearly not."

"Oh, you've no idea," he went on, adding exaggerated hand gestures to his performance. "I got to work only to be told that I'm up for reassignment—and not the good kind. By Koslun, you'd think I hadn't been working here since I was an apprentice. And my father before me! And reassigned where? They couldn't be bothered to tell me that. It made me late for meditations, and all I'd thought to bring to lunch was _qunoa—_with no spoon to eat it." He tossed the keys in his hand as if looking for the right one, letting a few of them slip between his fingers. "And to top it all off, I nearly lost these until the owner of this Panther quit for the day. But...now that you're here, I'm sure this is the sign that things can only improve."

He smiled his most friendly smile, white teeth catching what little light there was. And he promptly punched Taarbas in the face. Keys gripped between knuckles gouged and tore the skin. The other howled in pain. His metal case flew back behind him to protect it while his opposite hand went to his wounded flesh. This one was good at his job, Kashar acknowledged as he dove forward for another swing, staying on his guard enough to avoid being bludgeoned with the very item he was trying to attain. He tried not to think too much about how Taarbas—any Taarbas, really, it didn't have to be this one—had been groomed by the army to be the courier of couriers. Things missing. Things forgotten. Things requiring the utmost care and attention. That was what these men were bred and trained for. To retrieve, protect, and deliver those things.

It was a fool to think that the Qunari needed an entire entourage for anything such as this.

Kashar held his own for as long as he could. Even with blood coating his neck and shoulder, Taarbas fought to protect his case as much as he fought to subdue his assailant. His feet were as useful as anything else, and the Fog Warrior knew that he would be feeling every kick for the next week. At least. But he could give as good in plenty, though his skill was more rough-honed and fed by the emotions Maraas insisted he not push aside. It was that lack of control that eventually got him the upper hand. But it could have just as easily been Taarbas suffering a bit more bloodloss than he'd been able to withstand. In any case, he slowed and grew clumsy, letting Kashar deliver the final blows to knock him unconscious. The instructions had been clear: death was to be avoided.

Scooping up the metal case, he ran. He dashed to the stairwell, juggling his load to get out of his jacket and pausing only long enough to flip it inside out and shrug it back on. Black pinstripe. His trousers were a little wrinkled but otherwise none the worse for wear. By the time he reached the bottom and stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight, he looked quite presentable as a local businessman. His pace was easy, and he adopted that same impassive expression as Taarbas had worn before their altercation.

Masha and the others were waiting at the corner diner, the lot of them sipping at milkshakes like they were just hanging out. None of them were older than eighteen. It was a ruse easily believed. Kashar walked straight past them and paused at the bar long enough to order a glass of water. The waitress was foreign, Rivaini perhaps. Her dark eyes glittered as she took him in, mocha lips curling into a sultry smile that hinted at more than a passing interest.

He chatted with her for a few minutes, the others keeping an eye on things for him while he busied himself with looking inconspicuous. He had a phone number and a name he would lose or forget as soon as he was out the door, and when the first police siren was heard up the street, he made a promise to call when her shift was over...maybe for coffee. With a wink and a smile, Kashar made his way out. The others followed him soon after, making a show of fighting over rules of some game they had been playing as they stayed between the public eye and Kashar.

"Did you get it?" Masha asked, breathless as she finally rushed up once they were in the clear.

Kashar held up the case. The combination lock across its seal was more complex than anything they'd yet stolen from the Tevene and would present a definite challenge when it came to breaking in. "Well, I got something."

"You said the convoy was a false alarm."

"I fought a Taarbas for this, little one. Even if it's not what Maraas wanted, it's worth all the gold we can trick the Tevene into paying."


End file.
